Kunming & Chengdu: 16th to 22nd May. Hi everyone. We have been a bit slow on updating the blog recently as we have been on the move a lot so apologies in advance that this is quite a long one! We are so pleased that so many of you are still enjoying reading about our antics, thanks again for all the lovely messages and emails. It really means a lot to us to hear from you. We miss you all very much. I would not say that we have been feeling home sick, bu...

Guilin & Yangshuo: 10-15 May. So, back into China. It's only 250 miles northeast from Hanoi to Nanning but it takes 12 hours on the daily overnight train which is cunningly timed so that you hit the border at 2am. After an hour sat in a waiting room on the Vietnamese side while everybody gets stamped out of the country, it's a short trip down the line to experience a Chinese waiting room for another hour while you get stamped in and your luggage x-rayed. We ...

Sapa: 2nd May - 7th May We caught the overnight sleeper train to Lao Cai (no more sleeper buses for us!), the nearest railway station to Sapa. Lao Cai is in the very north of Vietnam, virtually on the border with China. The sleeper trains have compartments of either 4 or 6 bunks depending on the price of your ticket. We opted for the 4 bunk version as neither of us really fancied sleeping with our nose pressed to the roof of the train! We shared a carriage wi...

Hanoi: 26 April – 1 May Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam but is smaller, less brash and supposedly more sedate than Ho Chi Minh City. To us outsiders though, the energy, bustling people and traffic of Hanoi was virtually on a par with HCMC particularly in the Old Quarter around our hotel where the bulk of the hotels, restaurants, shops and markets are located. Our bus back from Halong Bay dropped us at our hotel in the late afternoon and we had an early dinne...

Halong Bay – 24th to 26th April 2011 We arrived in Hanoi in the early evening after a full day of sight seeing and travelling. This is our first visit to Hanoi and is only a short one night stop over before our 3 day boat trip at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Halong Bay. It was a bit of a shock to the system being back in a big city again, motorbikes everywhere and so much noise. We had forgotten just how hectic the cities in Vietnam were and the thought...